Recently my wife and I went out on a date (gasp) up to Seattle to see a very fine show: John Hodgman’s (JoHo) new book tour, co-starring Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) at Town Hall Seattle (ToHoSeo (stop it)).
We had no idea what to expect from this show, but it turned out to be a fantastic night of comedy and music. And comedic music. But not a musical comedy. Kind of. Basically the show consisted of John Hodgman talking about something, then Jonathan Coulton would sing a song that was somehow connected to what John Hodgman had talked about. For example: early in the evening Hodgman talked briefly about the recent election, then Coulton sang this updated version of his Presidents song:
But the show was so much more than that! The show was fantastic because it actually had a plot.
Here it is: Hodgman & Coulton came out, and Coultan sang the theme song that he’d written for Hodgman, which consisted mostly of how Hodgman was a “computer salesman” and sold computers. Hodgman took issues with this and said that just because he was the PC in the Mac vs PC commercials didn’t mean that he actually sold computers.
For the first half of the show, Hodgman kept on referring to Coulton as his “feral mountain man.” Coulton took issue with this, saying that he wasn’t actually feral, and he really wasn’t even technically a mountain man. He just had a kind of bushy beard and long-ish hair. Eventually as the night grew on Coulton became more and more disgruntled, until Hodgman revealed that he thought this day may come, and therefore he had a back-up feral mountain man waiting in the wings.
That man turned out to be John Roderick (right) of The Long Winters and Harvey Danger. He came out and sang a couple of his songs, including “Prom Night at Hater High.”
Then Johnathan Coulton said that he also figured that this day might come, and he also had his own back-up tweedy nerd-type.
This turned out to be Sean Nelson, also of The Long Winters and Harvey Danger. He was dressed in a tweedy suit like Hodgman. He played a Monkees cover on a big grand piano:
Then to prove that they worked well together, Nelson and Coulton performed a great cover of Billy Joel’s “Don’t Ask Me Why”
After that, John Roderick got into the spirit of things, and he and Sean Nelson ended up performing a really, really wonderful cover of “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon et Garfunkle. I can’t find any video of that, which is a shame. At any rate, the two of them playing together helped them to “reconcile,” and the left together, leaving Coulton and Hodgman alone on the stage. With both of their backups gone they were forced to also reconcile.
Hodgman then told a great story of going to the Battlestar Galactica ride at Universal Studios when he was a kid, and how he actually now has an cameo in an upcoming epsidoe of Battlestar Galactica. Coulton then played the old BSG theme song and included lyrics that he wrote for it (which included a section about how the robots were now “erotic” and the show was much better for it).
Towards the end Hodgman had a Q&A session. A handful of people went up to the microphone provided. Hodgman asked the first woman her name, then asked if she had a question. She said she did. Hodgman then said that he knew she did, because he had prepared her question for her. He then handed her a piece of paper with a question on it and had her read it. He did this with a couple of people before letting them ask real questions.
Eventually the night wound down and Coulton played a couple of his crowd-pleasers like “Code Monkey” and “Re: Your Brains.” Then as a final farewell to the crowd, Hodgman surprised everybody by pulling out a ukulele. Then this happened:
It was a fantastic ending to a fantastic show.
I wanted to get a couple of things signed (I had Venue Songs for Hodgman), but neither Carrie nor I felt at all like waiting in a long, long line (must have been 150 people or more), so we went on home instead. Good date.
Posted by Chris at 1:09 pm.
